


It’s Not Enough To Rewrite; Rather, To Reforge

by Zayrastriel



Series: Rewritten [4]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies RPF, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 18:22:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zayrastriel/pseuds/Zayrastriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lia, our conquering hero, has another, rather more two-sided conversation with Mr. Horny.  Bree researches, and doesn’t like what she finds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 2 chapters this time, guys. Enjoy (=

**11:00 pm, 22 nd June 2020, Stuttgart, Germany**

Raine goes home – rejects Steve’s polite offer of an escort to the station with barely a modicum of politeness – but Lia forgives her because she see the wildness in her friend’s eyes.  As Raine walks away, Lia hears her muttering something under her breath about _fangirls_ and _crazy_ and _deleting-my-Tumblr-today_. 

Surreptitiously, Lia logs into Raine’s Tumblr on her iPhone (new and shiny, she loves this job almost as much as she hates it) because sharing passwords is fun, and changes her friend’s password.  Raine looks just disturbed enough to actually go ahead and delete her Tumblr and it’s Lia’s responsibility as a sober, undisturbed-by-mad-fangirls individual to stop her from ruining her life.

(Because Tumblr withdrawal _sucks_.  Lia would know.)

Lia would give anything to be able to leave as well, just slink into the darkness so she can commit suicide quietly and unobtrusively and just maybe be able to escape the waves of _I cannot believe I actually did that_.  

But Stark smirks at her as she’s about to run after Raine, adds something casual about her needing to return to the US with them; Fury apparently needs her to do some liaising because her holiday is, quote, “ _most certainly over_ ”.

Lia gives him the five-fingered Scrandoms insult, hisses “ _I totally ship you and Ara because you’re the only douche that’s douchier than she is_ ” loud enough for Steve to choke back a laugh.  But her heart isn’t in it (and really she just ships them because Stark hates Ara with as much feeling as he despises Robert Downey Jr).

The thing is, she’s sort of glad she’s being ordered to return to America, even though she’s losing two weeks of the rest of her holiday that she’s probably not going to get back for a while. She hasn’t been back to New York in a month and a half, and it feels depressingly like she’s not been home in a month and a half either.

(Because she totally wants to think of America as her home.  Eww.)

 

~

 

For want of any other transport, and despite insisting on taking a plane or a boat or anything that’ll get her back to America as slowly as possible, Lia somehow finds herself sitting uncomfortably in the Stark jet.

Thankfully, she’s hidden from Loki’s gaze by Steve and Stark, though she’s feeling vaguely paranoid that he knows she’s there, is just waiting for the opportunity to strike her down for being annoying.

Lia’s torn from her wonderful stewing in embarrassment by the loud roll of thunder ripping through the sky on the back of a brilliant flash of light that illuminates everything in a blinding instant.

Ooh, pretty; though clearly Loki doesn’t agree.  “What’s the matter?” Steve asks, sounding more than a little amused.  “Scared of a little lightning?”

“I’m not overly fond of what follows.”  There is actual ice, all crystally and not-friendly when the god replies.

_What the-_

And then stuff happens.

~

 

She’d think, now that they’ve captured Loki, there’d be some relaxation time.  But no sooner than they’ve got the alert that Loki’s brother has joined the party, Bree gets a phone call.

Not a phone call, as in Kate calling to tell her that she left the air conditioning on this morning when she left the house, but a _phone call_ , from a contact.

Not a contact, but a _contact_.

“Something wrong?” Maria asks, obviously seeing something in her expression.

Bree shrugs.  “Stuff,” she answers vaguely.  Maria gives her another look, and then her expression clears.

“Ah,” Maria sighs.  “Work?”

“Yeah, sorry…”

“No, no, it’s fine!” Bree’s girlfriend says quickly.  “I should probably get to work anyway.”  She walks off before Bree can say anything about the bags under her eyes, or that she knows for a fact that Maria hasn’t had more than a couple of hours of sleep in the last three days. 

Bree debates, very briefly, whether or not she should run after Maria and stuff the phone call; but she hasn’t heard from this contact in ages and this might actually be vaguely important.

 _Sigh_.

She answers the phone when it rings again about two seconds after it starts.  “I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you,” Bree says quietly, careful to keep her tone light.

“ _I didn’t expect to ever find anything important enough to risk my neck and call you_ ,” the urgent voice on the other end says.  “ _Something’s happening with the Tesseract._ ”

Eurgh.  “Yeah, yeah, we’ve got Loki, it’s fine, nothing’s going to-“ she starts, only to be cut off by a growl of impatience from the other end.

“ _I’m not talking about Loki, Lao_.”

 

~

 

Steve and Lia stare at each other blankly, alone in the Stark jet, silent for a long, long while.

“Um.  What just happened?” Lia asks finally.

The Captain sighs heavily.  “I’m not made for this – I mean…Two years ago I was a boy from Brooklyn,” and Lia shows what she thinks is totally a whole pile of tact and doesn’t comment on the fact that at least he got two years of relative weird, whereas she’s had half a year of semi-normal followed by like three days of _gah_.

“Yeah, well,” she counters, “I’m _Australian_.”

He looks at her for a while and then shrugs.  “Good point.”

 

~

 

Bree’s really careful to just not react to anything she hears.  Instead she walks, not too fast, down the corridor, making sure to say hi to everyone she normally does, shrug and whisper _Mum_ in that sort of embarrassed-affectionate way that Mum tends to inspire. 

“You can’t be serious,” she whispers only once she’s made it to the room she’s been allocated with Maria (she was probably a bit too happy about that, but Fury tends to treat their relationship like an unavoidable annoyance that he tries to acknowledge as little as possible, so this is a pretty solid victory).  Like she suspected, Maria’s not there, which is what she was hoping for.  “You must…I don’t know, that can’t be right.”

“ _It is._ ”

“Alright.  Yeah, okay, no, I believe you, it’s just…”

“ _Believe me_ ,” the voice says grimly, “ _I know.  But-_ **What are you doing, Smithson?** ”

It’s another voice, unfamiliar and distant.  “ _Nothin’, sir, just talking to ma m’am_.”

Bree’s no good at the whole disguising voices thing but even she can tell that was a failed attempt.

“ **Give me the pho-** “

The call cuts off abruptly.

She stares at the screen for a full minute before she gets the text message.

 _Unit no. 2073 self-destruct initiated_.

 _Sorry_ , Bree thinks, squeezing her eyes shut for a brief moment before shaking her head to clear away the fog of guilt.

It doesn’t really work.

“Bree?  Is everything alright?”

It’s Maria, voice soft and concerned.  Bree shoves her phone into the pocket of her jacket and turns around, walking to the door where her girlfriend’s standing and pulling her down for a kiss; not sexual but intimate all the same.  Warm, and comforting, and when Maria wraps her arms around Bree she can let herself believe for the smallest instant that everything’s going to be okay.

 

~

 

Lia is terrified that she’ll see Loki when they get out of the jet, and that he’ll use one of his freaky powers to kill her with the power of his murderous sight.

Thankfully, he only manages an unreadable glance before being dragged off the plane by S.H.I.E.L.D people, and she doesn’t drop dead so it’s all good.  “I’m alive,” she exhales, and Stark looks at her, raising an eyebrow.

“Unfortunately,” he mutters.

Steve shoots him a glare.  “Don’t be rude,” the Captain says disapprovingly, and Lia feels a surge of the warm fuzzies that she normally only gets when she’s either really tired, drunk, or in shock.  Right now, she’s probably a combination of all three, though maybe the Tumblr rant seared all the alcohol from the party out of her body, because she’s feeling disappointingly sober.

 

~

 

“You’re an idiot,” Bree half-yells, half-sighs before hugging her tight around the middle, short as ever.  Over Bree’s shoulder, Maria smiles slightly, mouths _good work_ as though Lia embarrassing herself in front of the entire bloody world was all part of some massive plan. 

That is a good idea, actually.  Maybe if she rolls with that and employs her totally vast array of acting skills she might be able to get away with it.  “It worked,” she shrugs, glancing over at Fury when Bree lets her go finally.

“Hmm,” Fury says, casting her a look that promises _pain_.

Damn.

“Fool,” Ara says, pointedly _not_ hugging her (surprise, much?) as she spins round and round on a chair as Lia looks over and realises she’s there.

Ara.  Is on a giant aeroplane-island thing.  _Why?_

“What are _you_   doing here?” Stark asks with more than a little horror in his voice, beating Lia to the question.  “You don’t even _work_ for S.H.I.E.L.D!”

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,” Ara shrugs.  “Collecting data for the movie someone – and by someone I mean _me_ because hello, I am amazing – is totally going to write about this whole thing.  Norse gods and superheroes?  Fricking awesome.”  She frowns.  “Might not work as a tagline, that.  What do you think, Lia-chan?”

See, here’s the thing.  Ara says stuff, yeah.  And each word works by itself, and it’s probably all grammatically correct because Ara’s good at that stuff.  But call it being exhausted or just being suddenly painfully aware of the fact that she almost died courtesy of Tumblr tonight, and suddenly nothing is making sense.

“…Right,” she settles for.  “Nice.  Yeah.”

“Nice work by the way,” Ara continues, spinning around on her chair yet again and making Lia’s vision swirl alarmingly.  “Though seriously, Tumblr?  Whatever, I’ll just replace it with something dramatic and socially aware – some Holocaust survivor talking about freedom and trauma, I don’t know.”

“…Right.”

“Oh, and Tumblr’s down.”

That’s around the point that Lia faints.


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where the reforging starts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the shit writing :3 been pretty off while I've been writing this, sorry!

Everyone’s back, safe and sound.

Unfortunately, Bree still has a job to do, so she doesn’t get to take the easy way out like Lia and faint.  She doesn’t even get a break after hearing about the Tumblr crash, and there’s trauma and _trauma_.

This is _trauma_ , like, seriously.  It’s like having to do Psychology first year at USYD, except worse, because there’s _no Tumblr_.

It takes her about five minutes of cross-referencing sources before Bree completely forgets to be annoyed.

~

Natasha stands by the door, waiting as patiently as she can for Guan to wake up.  Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue; but she’s worried, as loath as she is to admit it.  Clint’s her best friend (Natasha won’t admit to more even in the safety of her own head), and the fact that he’s gone renegade is bad enough.  That they’ve captured Loki is…good…but she’s not so sure. 

Fury’s asked her to interrogate the man, after he’s finished with Guan.  She can only hope she’ll find out what he’s really doing here.  A man who calls himself a god would not have submitted so easily to capture, no matter how much Stark is crowing about his apparent victory.  Personally, Natasha thinks that they owe their victory, however real it is, to the girl passed out in front of her.

She saw the expression on Loki’s face as he glanced at Guan before being hauled away.  Perhaps to a civilian it might have been unreadable.

To Natasha, it had confusion written all over it.

(In capital letters.  Also in Russian, but that might have just been Natasha.)

“…Mmph,” she suddenly hears from the bed, and her eyes flicker over to where Guan is stirring slowly, twitchingly. “…Wha’shap.” The girl mumbles, turning her head Natasha’s way and blinking blearily.

“Sorry?”  Natasha asks politely.

“Wh’app,” Guan tries again, looking about as confused as Natasha is by what’s coming out of her mouth. 

Natasha blinks slowly, using the second and a half to attempt to discern some hint of coherency. 

_Wh’app/Wha’shap_

_What’s hap/app_

_What’s happening?_

Ah.  “Loki asked to speak to you,” she says somewhat more confidently as Guan has swung her legs off the bed and started to stand, making to clear her hair, long and messy, out of her face.

She freezes at Natasha’s words.

“What.”

Did the girl hit her head when she fainted?  “Loki,” Natasha repeats slowly, elongating the syllables.  “You know-“  She’s cut off rather abruptly as Guan takes a step forward and trips over nothing, crashing to the floor face-first with a yelp of agony.

From somewhere beneath a mess of hair comes a barely audible “…Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Natasha replies calmly.  “Take your time, I’ve got all day.”

 ** _Might be a while_** , she texts to Coulson, who’s keeping an eye on Loki while Fury and Hill deal with Stark, Rogers and Thor.

 ** _Hurry up_** , is the reply a half-minute later, **_There’s a limit to how many vague, pointless threats I can make at once._**

****

~

 

“This can’t be right,” Bree mutters, but when she logs out and hacks back in, it’s the same series of messages on the screen. 

She logs out after clearing the internet history (and double clearing it to make sure it can’t be restored, corrupting about half the files, and then deleting everything off the hard drive with a sense of vicious satisfaction.)  Then she leans back with a sigh, pushing the chair away from the computer so she can swivel herself around on it.  It turns pretty easily, barely requires the occasional push from her leg to keep going.

About ten minutes later Bree realises that she’s been swivelling around on a chair for ten minutes.

She stops, glancing at the window to make sure no one’s looking through into the room, one of many sparsely-furnished…okay she doesn’t even know, are they guest bedrooms?  Is that something that happens on giant floating islands?...that litter the whole place.

Whatever – it worked for what she was doing, anyway.

What she was doing.

 _Yay_.

The thing now, though, is… _now what_?

 _Maria_ \- _no, no, nooooo okay that is actually a really bad idea_.

Bree feels much worse about that than she should, and for the first time she wonders whether Fury’s muttered _nothing good comes from dating a reporter_ to Maria, the day after they hooked up at that party and had awesome tongue sex, was possibly true.  Not on Maria’s side, of course, because Bree is totally the perfect girlfriend.

It’s because she’s still feeling bad, for something that isn’t her fault, something she shouldn’t feel bad about.  Maria doesn’t tell her things either, Bree knows that.

But this is big-

 _No_.

There’s always Ara, but _no_.  (Also, she might already know, in that really creepy way she has of knowing things, and that would be awkward.)

She scrolls down her phone contacts list (one of the really cool Stark prototype phones that she got given as a ‘Congratulations for getting Hill into bed.  Though I was wondering, how did that work, with the whole height thing?’ present.)

Stops at a name.

“Hmm.”

There’s nothing strictly _illegal_ about it, not really.

Plus, phoning a friend is totally legit, she reasons as she waits, listening to the phone ring.

“ _Bree, you bitch, you were meant to be home like three days ago_.”

It says a lot about Bree’s life that Kate doesn’t actually sound annoyed or worried, just half-asleep.

 

~

 

“I don’t want to,” Loki hears the girl whisper – no doubt she believes he can’t hear her, but then she is merely mortal.

Mortal and _insane_.  The male agent who is at this moment looking with poorly-disguised relief towards the girl and her escort (a slender woman with fiery hair) had, with some reluctance, attempted an explanation of _Tumblr_.

To Loki it appears to be nothing more than a curious, meta-existent form of mental asylum, with bars of social construction rather than iron keeping the insane, or at least the worst of their insanity, from the world.

Perhaps when Loki rules over this world he will investigate further this invention of humanity.  Primitive, but it shows promise…

“You don’t have to stay for long,” the woman replies, softer than the girl.  Not softly enough, but he appreciates her sense of caution.  “Just-“

“Bleurgh.”

Loki frowns, not sure whether that mumble of syllables is in fact a coherent word – it is possible, because he had genuinely believed her earlier spiel wasn’t. 

“Ah, Miss Guan,” the male agent – Coulson, he believes – calls out loudly, relief a violent undercurrent.  “We’ve been waiting for you.”

He doesn’t understand, what-

 The girl is shoved forwards, and the female agent and her male counterpart vanish with an almost inhuman speed that would make him reluctantly impressed if he _weren’t confused_. 

For a long moment they stare at each other, Loki with bewilderment and the girl with terror.  Finally, Loki forces himself to break the silence, asking slowly: “what are you doing here?”

She doesn’t react the way he expects (wants) – instead of lines of terror deepening in her face, her brow wrinkles in confusion before something seems to click in her mind.  Surprisingly quickly, she whirls around and sprints up the stairs back to the door.  The girl bangs on it hard, over and over again.  “ _YOU GUYS SUCK_!” she screams, and Loki winces.

 

~

 

When Bree enters the console room, they’re all yelling at each other. 

She waits all of about five minutes, quietly and patiently, before she decides _screw you_ and grabs Stark by the shoulder, driving a knee into his groin with ruthless efficiency.

(It’s an argument and Stark’s in the room, so it’s clearly the right thing to do.  It’s like, community service or something.)

It does kill conversation, though she can’t be sure if it’s that, or the pretty audible sounds of Stark screaming in pain, or the really loud laughter coming from a tall blond ( _hot_ ) guy with armour and a hammer.  _Thor_ , Bree assumes with slight disappointment, because she knows Thor’s already got a human girl, and he doesn’t look like the type to cheat.

 _Not that I’d want that_ , Bree adds hastily to herself.  _What with Maria and all_. 

She tries to think about Thor as a sort of giant, armoured, really sexually attractive teddy bear-

“What do you want, Lao?” Fury asks with a half-growl, half-sigh that says frustration, annoyance and…fear?  No, not directed at her – directed at Dr. Banner, which Bree really doesn’t understand because he’s actually a sweetheart.

Banner, not Fury.

Wow, for a journalist her head writes itself in confusing ways.

“ _Lao_!” Fury barks over the continued sounds of Stark’s groaning – and okay, right now he’s got to be faking, or at least milking Steve’s worry and Dr. Banner’s mild concern for all it’s worth, and – _okay_ ,Fury looks furious.

(Her inner Ara, because somehow one’s stuck onto her mind like a fucking parasite to comment randomly like the little shit Ara really is, says something snide about language.)  “Shut up,” she mutters under her breath.  Then louder, as Fury’s expression becomes blacker and blacker –  “Yeah.  “Yeah.  Um, I need to talk to them.”

He raises an eyebrow.  “Talk.”

Gathering every ounce – wait no, she’s not American, every _gram_ , no that sounds _stupid_  - of courage, Bree meets his eyes.

Eye.

Whatever.

“Alone.”

There’s dead silence as they stare each other down.  Bree’s pretty sure she’s losing – her eyes are already watering – when Stark snorts, somehow miraculously not in pain anymore.

“You heard dearest Brianna, Captain.  Off you go!  Au revoir!”

“Stark-“

“The lady has made a request, Captain Nicholas Fury,” Thor cuts in with his freakishly thunderous voice.  “It would be quite churlish on your part if you were to refuse.”

Fury hesitates, meeting Bree’s eyes again; but she’s had time to blink and so now they’re wonderfully clear and steady.

“ _Fine_ ,” he says in a voice that promises Bree she’s not going to see Maria for more than five minutes for a while. He walks out of the room – no not walks, more…

“Flounces!” Stark exclaims.  “That’s the word I was looking for!”

Bree takes a horrified moment to realise that she not only now owes Stark for helping her out, but that she’s now thinking like him.

 

~

 

So Lia’s been locked in a room with a guy she’s pretty positive wants to kill her for being annoying.  She is aware that he’s enclosed in some high-tech prison thing and that he can’t theoretically hurt her.

Theory is a piece of shit.

After she gives up on banging fruitlessly at the door, Lia turns around to sit awkwardly on the steps in front of the giant glass cage.  Loki stares at her, expressionless – she’s really uncomfortably aware of his gaze even though she tries as hard as she can (and that’s a lot of effort she’s putting in, like, honestly) to not meet his eyes.

They’re silent for a while, but Lia’s head is screaming _RUN HIDE FLY AWAAAAY DIEEEE_ loudly enough that it takes her a good half a minute to realise he’s said something.

 _Oh god he’s gonna kill me_ , she thinks as she whispers out a faltering “Pardon?”

Something fleeting touches his eyes.  If she didn’t know better, she’d think it was amusement.  “I said, you were a lot more talkative the last time we interacted,” Loki repeats slowly, voice dispassionate.

 _Crap, that reminds me_.  “I’m so unbelievably sorry about that!” Lia says quickly. 

He blinks.  Slowly.

“What.”

“Like seriously, totally would have understood if you’d smited me – smited, wait is that a word?  Or is it smote?  Oh my god, this is really embarrassing” – wait, who the hell says _oh my god_ in front of a fricking _god_ , “and wow um yeah, uh, well, like… _hi_.”

He’s looking at her like she’s crazy.  She totally understands.

“I don’t understand,” he says slowly, the faintest line of a frown creasing his forehead.  “You’re trying to tell me that you would have found it acceptable if I were to have…killed you.”

Lia doesn’t trust her mouth right now so she just nods.

He makes small sound of incredulity.  “If only the rest of your race were so understanding,”

Oh wait, no, that’s not what she meant. “No, no, no,” Lia replies hastily.  “Smiting in general?  Bad.  Smiting me?  Bad also, but understandable.  Seriously, dude, I don’t get your obsession with the whole kneeling and smiting thing.”

Loki frowns for real this time.  “Obsession?  Hardly.  Would you say a boot was obsessed with the ant it was about to crush?”

That is a terrible analogy, and Lia says as much, probably without thinking because hey, she’s been not-thinking the whole day, what’s one more reason to be smote?  “That’s a shit analogy.  Boots don’t get involved in ant politics, and they don’t waltz into a fricking ant colony and announce that they’re gonna take control, thanks very much for your time.  And now I’m trying to imagine a boot waltzing, does that even make sense?” 

His eyes are starting to glaze over again, a look that she recognises from Bree, Raine, and Ara, whenever she talks about Tom Hiddleston, Phantom of the Opera and Mass Effect anything, respectively.

“So _basically_ ,” Lia adds, missing a syllable or two in her haste.  “I am totally right.”

Oddly enough, Loki doesn’t look particularly annoyed, or even extremely confused – merely thoughtful.  “So,” he says finally.  “Your argument is essentially that your species is able to maintain a socio-political discourse elevated enough by reason of physiological and politico-cultural standards which give you the ability to comprehend the signifiers of external involvement, as well as providing you with the aptitude for self-sufficiency and consequent reluctance to allow for domination by other powers, no matter how affluent or potentially benefictial.”

Lia blinks.

“Um.  Yeah.  Totes.”

The god stares at her for a long moment, vivid green eyes way too piercing.

“Hmm,” he says finally.  “Interesting.”

She might be wrong but she thinks she might detect a hint of reluctant respect; as though she’s passed some sort of test she didn’t know she was sitting.

“Now,” Loki says imperiously.  “In our last conversation you referred to this En-Ess-Eff-Double-You.  What is it?”

Oh god she’s gonna die.


End file.
